Key points for the Introduction/ Why a 2D game?

A Few Key Points for the Introduction

As our game development and marketing strategy are nearly complete, we started polishing our project and working on areas that need improvement. The final presentation of our game requires a careful structuring of all the information we gathered, and each one of us had to work on a specific area and then present it to the rest of the group members. In this blog post, the focus will be the introduction of the assignment, aiming to introduce the concept of cultural heritage. Also, I will discuss how social media and our participatory culture affect our experience of heritage, as well as the way in which our game will be used to engage and educate young people about cultural heritage.

            World Heritage includes both cultural and natural heritage. In our game, we decided to focus on only one of those categories; cultural heritage. The concept of cultural heritage is broad, and can be broken down into the following categories, according to the UN (http://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext/):

·         Monuments: architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and combinations of features, which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science;

·         Groups of buildings: groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science;

·         Sites: works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view.

Cultural heritage is linked to our sense of identity; through our heritage, we discover a sense of belonging, a sense of place and identity. According to Giaccardi (2012), “preserving, making sense and exchanging everyday artifacts and practices is increasingly becoming a matter of heritage; it brings the past to matter in the present, helping us to tell stories about who we are. In this sense, heritage artifacts and practices not only constitute a legacy to future generations, but they also play a crucial role in shaping our sense of place and identity” (p.5)

“Social media reframe our understanding and experience of heritage by opening up more participatory ways of interacting with heritage objects and concerns” (Giaccardi 2012, p.1). Nowadays, due to great technological advancements, mobile and ubiquitous technologies allow users to participate, impulsively and unceasingly, in activities of digitized heritage content and new digitally mediated forms of heritage practice” (Giaccardi 2012, p.2). People can now be connected to the internet, sharing, posting, and commenting, with those interactions being a kind of heritage themselves.

The concept of heritage has now become broader.  It is no longer limited to archaeological sites, monuments, and artifacts. Heritage today “is about making sense of our memories and developing a sense of identity through shared and repeated interactions with the tangible remains and lived traces of common past” (Giaccardi 2012, p.1)

“There can be no doubt that the importance of cultural heritage lies in the way in which it shows us something about ourselves and about the world to which we belong – in this respect even that which we do not take as part of our own heritage can nevertheless be significant to us just in virtue of being part of the heritage of those others with whom we share the same world – in this respect, the heritage of others is also part of our own heritage” (Malpas 2008, p.20). Things and places, like cultural heritage sites, carry memory with them, and so also carry identity and meaning, which is precisely why the preservation of them is so crucial.

Historic buildings and spaces give a sense of continuity, naturally linked with both our sense of space and our sense of belonging. “We socially construct heritage in the context of our own lives and imaginations to interact meaningfully with our past and shape our vision of the future. This indicates that heritage meanings and values are not attached to artifacts, buildings or sites. They are the results of repeated and ongoing interactions in the lived world of ordinary people” (Giaccardi 2012, p.2). We now live in a participatory culture, and the involvement allowed to users by social media is not merely made of virtual exchanges and online experiences; it is also intertwined with actual, physical objects, places and events that are enhanced with connectivity (Giaccardi 2012, p.4)

Young people are the decision-makers of tomorrow, and they also have the biggest stake regarding the future of cultural heritage. It is, therefore, our goal to engage them and involve them in ways of actively interacting with heritage. This presents a challenge, considering that young people seem to be disengaged from heritage. In order to tackle this problem, we created a fun, engaging game, which is essentially based on practices of sustainable tourism, as that is a requirement for cultural heritage preservation.

The aim of the game is to raise awareness about cultural heritage preservation, as well as the challenges surrounding it. Also, another goal is to motivate people to act in a respectful, responsible manner when it comes to preserving cultural heritage. 

Why a 2D game?

One of the first decisions we made regarding our game was that it had to be a 2D one, despite the growing trend of 3D games. There are several reasons why it was necessary for us to develop a 2D game instead of a 3D one.

The assignment requires us as a group to come up with a game that would work across a number of different platforms and be accessible by as many people as possible. Firstly, this assignment requirement on its own indicates the suitability of a 2D game, as 3D games only function across a very limited number of platforms (for instance, Nintendo 3DS). Not everyone owns a platform that supports 3D games; as a result, the majority of our target group would be excluded from playing the game due to the 3D factor. On the contrary, 2D games can be easily played by any standard mobile phone user. 2D games also have a simpler form and a clear goal, and are usually based on more basic controls; as result, learning how to play them is easy and intuitive. This perfectly matches the assignment requirement of creating a game that would not require too much time or effort for the gamer to learn and play (http://www.screwattack.com/news/2d-vs-3d-which-better)

Super Mario

Pokemon simplicity

Moreover, emphasis was placed on the production, distribution and maintenance costs of the game, as they should remain reasonably low. 3D games cost considerably more to develop and maintain, which again, makes a 2D game the best choice for our game. Koji Igarashi, the director of Konami’s Castlenavia series, is an enthusiastic supporter of 2D games. In 2007, during his presentation at the Games Developers Conference, he explained 2D games will always remain popular, in part due to their low production costs (http://www.joystiq.com/2007/03/13/castlevanias-koji-igarashi-2d-games-will-never-die/).

There are many disadvantages associated with 3D games, best summarized by Jacob Nielsen (http://www.nngroup.com/articles/2d-is-better-than-3d/):

·         The screen and the mouse are both 2D devices, so we don't get true 3D unless we strap on weird head-gear and buy expensive bats

·         It is difficult to control a 3D space with the interaction techniques that are currently in common use since they were designed for 2D manipulation (e.g., dragging, scrolling)

·         Users need to pay attention to the navigation of the 3D view in addition to the navigation of the underlying model: the extra controls for flying, zooming, etc. get in the way of the user's primary task

·         Poor screen resolution makes it impossible to render remote objects in sufficient detail to be recognizable; any text that is in the background is unreadable

·         The software needed for 3D is usually non-standard, crash-prone, and requires an extra download (which users don't want to wait for)

Another important reason why we chose to create a 2D game is the file size. 2D files are smaller in size, and thus easier to donwload. Since we want people to download our game on their mobile phones, mostly, then the size the game would require is of great importance. A 3D game would take up a lot of space on people's phones, which lead us to prefer a 2D game instead.

However, practicality was not the only reason why we chose to develop a 2D game. 2D games are by no means obsolete and outdated, as a lot of them remain very popular (for instance, Super Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, Mortal Combat, Sonic, or even the now classic Pac-man). 2D games still represent the majority of video games available in the market, and they are familiar to most young people (unlike 3D games). A 2D game brings about a sense of nostalgia, as a part of our target group of young people aged 16-25 essentially grew up with them. The retro feel of 2D games is not their only strength. 2D games are limited to a scrolling movement, and thus they do not offer the user-controlled camera 3D games offer: (http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/CS3152/2013sp/lectures/15-Perspective.pdf, pg.3)

However 2D games offer a significant advantage; with 2D games, it is easier to present a fuller view of the surrounding space. With 3D games, the gamer’s sense of space has to be constructed from multiple smaller places, instead of one piece that constitutes the surrounding architecture. For the purposes of our game, this is of great importance. We need the gamer to be able to see the whole image, including the monument. As a result, we preferred to develop a 2D game.

An example of how 2D games allow the player to view the surrounding architecture as a whole, at a bigger scale:

Pacman: allows the user to view the whole surrounding area

            Furthermore, as game developers, in this case, we are concerned about the gamer being able to see things in our game the way we wanted him/her to see them. For this reason, a 2D game is the ideal platform. Unlike 2D games, 3D games might provide strange angles that do not particularly serve the purpose of the game.